


high hopes

by thewayofthetrashcompactor (BriarLily)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Calligraphy, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I Love You, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, One Shot, Presents, Self-Esteem Issues, Valentine's Day, one brain cell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29595639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BriarLily/pseuds/thewayofthetrashcompactor
Summary: A couple's first Valentine's together is always a minefield of expectations. Ben wants to give Rey everything she deserves, but starts to worry that she's looking for something else.(Happy ending, of course)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 15
Kudos: 127
Collections: To Find Your Kiss: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	high hopes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notkellymarie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notkellymarie/gifts).



> last minute treat! hope you like it <3

Ben always knew that Rey was too good for him. 

It was one of those facts of the universe. The sun rose in the east, Ben Solo would inevitably fuck things up, and Rey Niima was too good for anyone, but especially him. It was nothing short of a miracle that she’d even spoken to him again after their first disastrous meeting, though their second (or third, or fourth) hardly went any better. And when he’d finally gotten his act together and crawled his way back to her to beg for forgiveness for the things he’d done under Snoke, he’d expected her to tell him what he already knew: that nothing could make up for the hurt he’d caused. He knew he loved her with the kind of doomed intensity only the culmination of the Solo and Skywalker men could manage, but he never anticipated she’d regard his feelings as anything more than a nuisance. 

Instead, she’d taken his face in her hands and kissed him like she’d been waiting for him for years. He remembered wrapping her up in his arms, half-convinced he was dreaming but determined never to let her go. They’d ended up in her bed. He would never be entirely sure how that happened, but he was never going to argue. Things had fallen into place from there with the kind of easy grace that shouldn’t happen to people like him. He’d given up his ridiculous over-priced apartment to move in with her and found another job that didn’t require him to sacrifice his soul. 

And somehow, things were good. Ben fed Rey and made sure she stayed warm and comfortable and got all the good things she deserved that she hadn’t had for too long. She held him every night, showed him off to her friends, and he thought she was happy. He started to believe things could work out, that maybe Rey wouldn’t wake up one day and realize she’d wasted almost a year of her life on him. 

The first hint that things might not be right came when he mentioned Valentine’s. They sat curled on the couch together in late January, Ben leaning on the armrest with a novel he was half paying attention to while Rey lay stretched across the couch with her head in his lap. She had her phone in her hand, occasionally typing, and every so often she’d turn to a different position. Ben’s free hand rested on her stomach and waist under her shirt, moving with her, rubbing small circles on her skin. The TV played in the background, nearly muted, tuned to some show Rey claimed to be watching. 

Ben idly glanced up in time for the screen to flick over to a commercial, something with lots of pink and hearts and flowers. “We haven’t planned anything for Valentine’s,” he mused aloud. He hadn’t seriously considered the holiday, though he found himself curious what Rey thought about it. 

What he didn’t expect was for her to half-jump off his lap and drop her phone. “What?” she squeaked. 

He closed his book and looked down at her, brow creasing. “We don’t have to do anything,” he clarified. “I just thought --” He waved vaguely with the book at the TV. 

If anyone asked, he’d assure them that he knew Valentine’s was nothing more than a corporate cash grab that forced couples to perform to meet societal standards. Truthfully though, he liked the idea of a day to show his partner how much he loved them. He’d always been hopelessly romantic at his core, a trait he suspected he’d inherited from his father, along with his disastrous flirting skills. He figured Rey probably knew that about him too, despite his attempts not to overwhelm her. Which may have been why she hurried to reassure him. 

“No, no, it’s fine,” she said. “I just wasn’t expecting it.” She pushed herself up to sit and turned to look at him. “Did you want to do something?”

He shrugged. “Maybe not anything big --” he hedged.

“Definitely not,” Rey agreed, almost too quickly. 

He hesitated before continuing. “Maybe a nice supper? I could pick up some seafood and make shrimp with pasta and crab cakes? And something with lots of chocolate for dessert. Have a romantic night in together.”

Rey relaxed, the tension going out of her shoulders. “That sounds great,” she said. 

“Are you sure? I don’t want to pressure you if you didn’t want to do anything --” 

She shook her head. “No, I’d love that. I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to go all out or anything. You do so much for me already.” She took his hand and threaded her fingers through his. “A Valentine’s dinner sounds perfect.” 

“Okay.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t let Lando keep you late that night.”

She smiled. “I won’t,” she promised. With a squeeze of his hand, she pulled away and stood up. “I need to call someone, I’ll be right back.”

He nodded and went back to his book. In his mind, he put her awkwardness down to the normal bumps in figuring out first time holidays in a relationship. He didn’t exactly have much to compare to. He made a note to his grocery list and started wondering if it would be too much to send flowers to her at work. 

He wouldn’t have thought about it again if Rey hadn’t continued acting so oddly. He came home from work late a few days later to find Rey sitting at the table, on her phone again. He walked around to stand next to her and leaned down for a kiss. Rey started at the press of his lips to her cheek and slammed her phone face down on the table with a sound that echoed across the kitchen. He froze, then slowly pulled back. 

Rey looked up at him sheepishly and forced a tight smile. "Hey," she said. 

Ben waited, but apparently she wasn't going to acknowledge anything unusual had happened. "Hey," he replied. Rey kept watching him with that strangely tense look, her hand covering her phone on the table. "Everything okay?" he asked slowly. 

She nodded quickly. "Yeah, of course." 

Ben lingered, but Rey didn't move. "Okay," he said. He walked stiffly back to their bedroom to change, feeling Rey's eyes on his back as he went. 

He didn't mean to start noticing how she kept her phone away from him after that, but he didn't think he was imagining that it changed. She usually had her phone on her, which didn't bother him. In the past, he’d gently teased her for living up to stereotypes of her generation with her texting and apps, usually in response to her teasing him for his disdain for technology. Really, he only kept his phone on hand for her. And he never paid much attention to hers until he noticed her angling her chair away from him when he came into the kitchen, keeping the screen close to her chest. Then instead of leaning on him on the couch like she usually did, she moved around to rest her feet on his lap. He still rested his hand on her calves, massaging the tight muscles, but his mind worked overtime trying to decide if he was overthinking the reason for the change. 

He didn’t think she was cheating on him. Rey was far too honorable for that. But he did start wondering if there were other things she wanted to hide from him. Like her asking her friends what would be the best way to let him down easily and get him out of her apartment. 

The final blow came a week before Valentine’s, when he left the bathroom after a shower on a Sunday morning to find Rey talking to someone on the phone. 

“No, not yet,” she said. He paused at the end of the hallway and watched as she paced back and forth, listening and nodding to the person on the other end. “I know,” she said with a sigh. “Soon, I swear, I just don’t want him to know --”

Ben stepped back into the shadows, heart pounding. There it was then. Rey wanted to break up with him; she’d just been putting it off. He couldn’t blame her. She could do so much better, but she was too kind-hearted to want to hurt him.

If he was braver, he thought he would have gone back to her and told her that he knew, ripped the bandage off and gotten it over with. Instead he went back to their room and collapsed backwards onto the bed. He stared up at the ceiling, wondering where he’d gone wrong and if there was anything he could do to change her mind. He didn’t want to confront her. He wanted to hold on to what they had for as long as he could, even if he knew it was doomed. 

After a while, Rey came back to find him. Her head poked around the doorway and her brow creased with concern when she saw him wrapped only in a towel on the bed.

“Ben?” she asked softly. “You alright?”

He rubbed a hand across his face, trying to scrub away the tears that had leaked out. “Fine,” he said, muffled by his hand. 

Rey padded across the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She leaned over and stroked a hand over his hair, smoothing it away from his face. “Are you sure?” 

He swallowed. “Yeah. Just… been a stressful week at work.” 

She frowned, and he could tell she didn’t believe him. She didn’t argue though, instead crawling the rest of the way onto the bed with him until she lay next to him. She wriggled an arm underneath him until she wrapped his chest in a hug. He couldn’t help letting one hand fall to embrace her in return. 

A few more tears slipped from the corners of his eyes, but he let himself be held. This couldn’t last, but he would take it while it did. 

Ben spent the next week on edge, waiting for Rey to break the news. She seemed to notice his tension but didn’t understand it, likely not thinking he’d figured out her plan. She still slept with him every night and left him with a kiss in the mornings. He went ahead with his plans for their Valentine’s dinner, determined to make it as perfect as he could, despite everything. 

When that evening came around, he felt fragile, like a cracked vase just waiting to fall to pieces. The dinner turned out flawlessly, somehow, but they ate in awkward silence. He watched Rey carefully, noticing the signs of her preoccupation, the way she didn’t much meet his eyes and picked over her food far more than he was used to seeing from her. His chest tightened, wondering if she’d tell him tonight. Maybe she’d decided she couldn’t wait any longer. 

His suspicions seemed confirmed when she asked him to join her on the couch after dinner, wringing her hands. He sat down, but instead of joining him, she asked him to wait while she got something. He frowned but nodded, wondering what she needed to tell him that they were done. 

She returned with a gift bag and his confusion deepened. Was this her way of softening the blow? 

“I know I said I didn’t want to do anything big, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while --” Ben’s heart dropped. “-- And, well.” She handed the bag to him, depositing it gently in his lap. “Hopefully you like it.” 

Still unsure what she was going for, Ben carefully pulled the tissue paper out of the bag, revealing a dark wooden box. He wrapped a hand around the box and removed it, setting it on his legs and putting the bag aside. He blinked at it and ran a hand over the surface. The finish looked older, not the kind of thing he’d expect from Rey. 

“Go ahead, open it,” she urged. 

He found a latch at the front that he flipped up, then pushed back the lid. The hinges creaked as they revealed a tray with four matching brushes, each with differently shaped bristles, tucked into loops of ribbon. Next to them, in their own indents, sat two fresh blocks of ink. In the bottom of the box beneath the tray he found a stack of textured paper. All the pieces were intimately familiar to him, though he hadn’t seen anything like them in years. 

He ran a hand over the brushes, hardly daring to touch them. “This is Alderaanian,” he said, throat tight. 

“Is it right?” Rey asked, hands gripping each other as she stood over him. “I tried, but I still wasn’t sure --”

“It’s perfect,” he assured her. He let out a shaking breath as he caressed the brushes again, then closed the lid and put the box on the table. He looked up at Rey, feeling like his heart was trying to squeeze its way out of his chest. “I can’t tell you how much this means.” He closed his eyes briefly before opening them to meet hers. “But you don’t have to do this. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been wanting to say?”

Rey’s mouth formed an ‘oh’ before she smiled wryly. “That obvious, huh?” He shrugged, unable to say more. “Okay. Here it goes.” She breathed in deeply, then blew out a frustrated stream of air. “This is a lot harder than I thought.”

He reached up and took her hand. “It’s alright,” he said quietly. “I’ll be okay. I can take it.”

She didn’t react with the relief he expected. “Take it? What d’you mean?” She seemed genuinely confused, and Ben gave her a tight smile. Time to lay it all out, apparently. 

“I know you’re going to break up with me.”

Rey’s eyes went wide and she pulled her hand back from his. He let it fall to the couch. It was out there now. No going back. His head dropped as he stared at the floor, waiting for her to give him the speech she’d surely been preparing. 

“Ben,” she started, and he winced, still not looking at her. “Ben,” she said again. Her hand cupped his cheek, tilting his head up towards hers. “You really thought I was breaking up with you?” Her eyes glistened like she might cry, and Ben’s thoughts tripped over themselves to try to catch up. 

“Are you not?” he asked dumbly. 

She shook her head quickly, and a few tears trickled down her cheeks. “I was trying to tell you I loved you!”

Ben gaped. They stared at each other, then he lunged forward and pulled her into his lap. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pinning her to his body, while his lips found her neck and pressed kisses up to her jaw. 

“I love you too,” he murmured, voice hoarse. “So much.”

Rey sniffled. “I know,” she told him. “I don’t think you even realize how often you tell me, even when you don’t say it. And I’ve wanted to say it back, but I could never get it to come out. So I decided I’d do it today, no matter what.”

Ben had never realized not saying the words had bothered her so much. “I would’ve waited forever, whatever you needed.” He meant it. He knew what her childhood had been like and was ready to give her all the time in the world. 

“I know that too.” Rey’s arms wrapped around his neck. “I wanted to though. You already do so much for me, and I feel like I don’t give enough back.” 

He leaned back to look at her incredulously. “Everything I do for you is because I want to. And you deserve every bit of it. You don’t owe me anything,” he promised.

Rey laughed wetly. “So you don’t want to break up?”

Ben’s arms tightened around her. “Never,” he swore.

She bent and kissed him, their lips devouring each other in relief. Not that long ago, he’d thought he’d never get to do this again. Now he had Rey sliding her mouth against his, telling him she loved him with her body as well as her words. 

“That’s good,” she said when she drew back. “Because I had to talk to your mother to figure out where to get your present, and I’m not really sure how to go back from that.”

He blinked. “My mother?” He’d slowly started talking with his family again in the last year, but those bridges have taken time to rebuild after everything that had happened between them. He hadn’t expected Rey to reach out to them on her own, but he found it made sense, knowing how much she wanted her own family.

“Is that okay?” she asked, biting her lip. 

“Of course,” he said. He ran a hand up and down her back, loving the feel of her body passing under his spread fingers. “The two of us are working on things, but you should talk to her whenever you want.” He smiled. “I can’t imagine her not loving you as much as I do.” 

Rey blushed and buried her face in his neck. “She seemed really excited to talk,” she said against his skin.

He chuckled. “I’m sure she was. I’m not sure she thought I’d ever find someone, let alone someone who would call to ask her about traditional Alderaanian calligraphy.” Ben smoothed a hand over Rey’s hair. “I don’t think I told you how incredible your gift is, by the way. I can’t even say how much it means to have those.”

Rey sat up and smiled at him. “They’re a little from your mother too. Which probably isn’t what you’re supposed to do for Valentine’s but I never would’ve been able to figure out the right set without her, and I wanted to get you something special, that you could actually use.”

“I couldn’t imagine anything better,” he said honestly. He frowned as he realized something. “I didn’t get anything for you though --”

Rey shook her head and pressed her hand over his mouth, cutting him off. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “You got me my favorite flowers and made an amazing meal. It’s just what I wanted. I did this because I wanted to, because I wanted you to have something just for you. You gave up so much to start over again last year, and I want you to have something that makes you happy.” 

“You make me happy.” He captured her lips in another kiss, slow and deep. 

He lingered over her mouth, exploring the lips he’d come to know so well. Realizing he’d be able to do this again and again lent a special kind of delight to the familiarity of her form against his. He stood with her in his arms, heart leaping at the pleased sound she made into the kiss. Not taking his lips from hers, he carried her back into their bedroom. 

Later, after he’d watched her fall asleep, he carefully extricated himself from the bed and walked naked back out to the couch. He turned on the lamp and opened the box he’d left on the coffee table. The polished brushes gleamed in the low light. He carefully took the tray out and removed a single piece of paper. 

It had been far too many years since he’d last done this, but the rhythm of it came back to him with surprising ease. He dipped his brush in the ink, feeling a calm he’d lost long ago fall over him as he set it to the paper. His message wasn’t long, but he lingered over each stroke. He let it sit out once he finished while he cleaned his brush and settled it back in the box. 

The sun still hadn’t reached the horizon when he crept back into their room. He looked over Rey in the dim moonlight, her face entirely relaxed in sleep. His chest swelled with overwhelming emotion, almost too much to contain. He reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. She snuffled and leaned into his hand before settling back down. With a helpless smile, he tucked the sheet of paper in his hand under her phone on her night table. 

He walked back around the bed and climbed under the covers. Even in her sleep, Rey rolled towards him and buried her nose in his chest. He tucked his arms around her, and everything seemed right with the world. Her chest pressed against his, their legs tangled, and he buried his nose in her hair. 

He could just make out the letter he’d left on the table, the dark letters gleaming in the night. 

_I love you._

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear what you think!


End file.
